Robert Tonner
Robert Tonner was born in 1952 in Indiana. He came from a not so well off family with four children, one of which was his twin brother. His mother was stricken with many illnesses. He used drawing & TV to escape from the difficult family situation. His inspirations came from Disney & their show, Bonanza, Bewitched & DC’s Justice League comic books. He loved dolls but that wasn’t a boy’s toy so he turned to his love of fashion & beautiful things in his art. When he was 8, he learned to sew. He attended a number colleges wanting for focus on medicine. He abandoned this goal to follow his true passion- to be a fashion designer. In 1973, he attended the Parson School of Design in NYC. He started his career with the sportswear fashion company of Gamut as a personal assistant. In 1976, the fashion designer Bill Blass hired him. Like Blass, he used flattering silhouettes, luxurious fabrics & detailing which has become his signature style. Later, he was to head the blassport label. Still with them, he found a hand-sculpted doll that caught his eyes. Having the medical school background, he had an interest in anatomy he wanted to try his hand at sculpting his own figure. He made a papier-mâché head that sat on his desk for yr until he brought to a friend’s apt. She was painting her place in a blush color. Robert dipped the head into the open paint bucket & it became a doll. After his Blassport stint, he started up his own label “Robert Tonner for Tudor Square”. He returned to Blass but after management changes, he left in 1991. It was then he decided to follow his dream of becoming a doll maker. He started out as a collector. He learned about doll collecting from another collector who introduced him to arts various doll artists such as Martha Armstrong-Hand. He made friends with Helen Kish, another doll maker. In 1985, he went to a national institute of American doll artists’ conference & entered one of his dolls for critique. He impressed doll markers r. john Wright & Martha Armstrong-Hand along with Kish. With their advice & encouragement, Robert join NIADA where he became an active member becoming its standards chairman from 1991-1995 and later became president in 1995. After the stress of fashion design, he decided to leave NYC & headed to up state NY. As he was house hunting, he met Harris Safier, his realtor and future business & life partner. Harris’ business sense would help Tonner launch his own doll company in 1991 “Robert Tonner Doll Designs”. Their first collection was presented at Toy Fair 1992. They bought 12 porcelain dolls that garnered a lot of attention. Offers poured in. he made agreements with Lenox China & Gorham of selling limited additions of porcelain dolls in the high dollar mark range. His unique style of jointed dolls appealed to large cross section of collectors. He did 14” little girl dolls & sophisticated 17” model that came with their own wardrobe that sold for over $1000. These model dolls would influence him to make his “American Model” collection. Concerned over production costs, he switched to vinyl production since he was making every single element himself. He had the dolls made overseas since the molds could be made there & vinyl process isn’t as messy. In order to grow his business, Robert needed to delegate more to turn the company from an art venue to a doll manufacturer. His first vinyl doll was an 18” Kaylie, a little girl who came in different outfits priced under $300. As store were buying & promoting his product, he renamed the company “Robert Tonner Doll Company” in 1994. The doll magazines featured article & covers of his dolls. He became more involved with conventions stores by produces special dolls and one of a kind dolls for auctions. FAO Schwarz asked for a special showgirl doll that lead to Star Wars’ “Amidala” & Titanic’s “Rose”. Up to this time Tonner’s most popular dolls series was the vinyl 19” “American Models” portrait fashion doll collection. He felt that these big dolls would be harder to translate into poseable fashion dolls completely of vinyl. Due to his success in his other doll lines, like Betsy McCall, he had the resources to develop injection-molded hard plastic body parts. Vinyl still was the best medium to make the head sculpt with rooted saran hair. He turned his early 90’s multi-jointed porcelain fashion dolls as his inspiration and scale. He thought about the necessary features that would allow for future development as the line matured. One of the essential elements was the doll needed to be able to sit with sophisticated-educated woman of the city. The doll kept evolving into one of his most complex characters. Another was the use of fine, saran hair, it had a realist drape to but it was expensive & not widely produced in the market place at the time. It was a hard to style fiber & he knew each of the hairstyles would take a considerable amount of handwork to achieve. Finally to give the head wide range of motion a specially engineered neck joint was created. In order to keep this joint, the vinyl could not be pulled from the mold by the neck. A new process was invented to allow the head to be pulled from the crown & then capped. It would create a rooting challenge in the first dolls but was resolved in later dolls. Working in vinyl & hard plastic is difficult. Vinyl shrinks while the hard plastic keep its original shape. The heads came out too small so soaking them in special solution allowed it to expand to the original sculpt we know today. To this day, tonner works closely with his factory’s management to innovate new production processes. With the doll development in progress, Robert turned toward the fashions. He wanted to give the collectors luxurious fabric: cashmere, French lace, silk charmeuse, emboroider silk shantung, camel hair linen, brocades & micro sequined silk chiffon. He would develop custom material when a fabric could be found. The miniature sweaters were designed just as they would be for human scale with sweater specs. In February 1999, almost 40 years to the day of Barbie’s debut, Tonner unveiled his ultimate line, Tyler Wentworth, a realistic looking, proportioned fashion doll with bending legs. The majority of fashion dolls at the time were straight legs so this was an extraordinary achievement. She didn’t come in a swimsuit but working professional wardrobe of a white shirt & black skirt, a look of 7th Ave fashion designer of today. Her expression was pleasant; her build was tall & athletic. She was a contemporary woman who can wear today’s latest fashions. “Tyler Wentworth” was not Robert’s first choice of name… a slew of other first & last names were being tossed around. It was coming down the wire and it looked like she would have been named “Perry Laurence” until a staff member suggested to him the name “Tyler Wentworth”. He first turned down the name but with some consideration Robert know it was the right name. Tyler fans were excited even before her release since Tonner already had a great following. This was the high point in the fashion doll collectors boom. Tyler debuted 4 yrs after Gene & many other companies tried to follow the 16” doll trend... such as Madame Alexander’s contemporary Alexander Fairchild Ford, Knickbocker’s mod gals Daisy & Willow, & Sandra Bilotto’s Butterfly girls & others. Also, these dolls had their own story lines. Gene was dressed in mid-century fashions & film costumes while Tyler was a contemporarily dresses which a natural fit giving tonner’s fashion background. Collectors didn’t by one or the other. They bought both…each with its unique style. Category:Fashion Doll Designers